Qatar: Wirtgen Surface Miners in charge of routing operations for the construction of a port facility

A total of 50 million cubic meters of mostly hard rock needed to be removed for construction of the new, ultra-modern deepwater seaport in Doha (Qatar). The company the project was awarded to, China Harbour Construction Co. (CHCC), originally planned to complete the job in a conventional manner using drilling and blasting. Due to the economical and ecological advantages of the Wirtgen Surface Mining technology, however, CHCC finally decided to use this environmentally friendly process as the optimal method.

In this well-established mechanical mining procedure, Surface Miners cut and crush the rock with a special cutting drum before transferring it into dumpers via sturdy conveyor systems - all in a single pass. Alternatively, the rock can be placed alongside the machine or laid in windrows between the tracks. Only Wirtgen can offer both of these options. As a result, surface miners are very flexible to use. They have cutting widths of 2.20 to 4.20 m and cut down to depths of 20 to 83 cm - at a uniaxial compressive strength of up to 120 MPa. Special machines for rock construction can even cut hard granite up to 260 MPa. Wirtgen is the only manufacturer which can offer a performance range of 100 to 3,000 t/h with direct loading by conveyor belt.

Instead of drilling and blasting, CHCC chose the innovative WIRTGEN surface mining technology. The rock to be mined in this project was characterized by an unconfined compressive strength of 35 to 40 MPa. The production rate of the WIRTGEN 2500 SM is 400 t/h.

For the project in Doha, the company purchased a Wirtgen 2500 SM surface miner with a cutting width of 2.5 m and a working depth of up to 600 mm. In addition to this, CHCC could rely on the application services of an experienced Wirtgen Team. After all, the amount of rock mined is not the only important criteria for using Surface Miners. Facts such as the geological composition of the location, sedimentation or logistic requirements play an important role as well. Here the knowledge of experts and best practice are required. This is why both the local dealer in Qatar and Wirtgen application specialists accompanied the customer as partners for the entire duration of the project.

The miner’s excellent cutting results and the reliable after-sales service offered by Wirtgen fully convinced CHCC so that two additional 2500 SM machines reported for duty in Qatar in June 2013.

In this multinational large-scale project, China Harbour Construction Co. profits from the direct support on site and the consistently high operational availability of Wirtgen Surface Miners. High quality materials and economic operations guarantee optimum planning security for CHCC.

The cut material from different passes is dumped on a stockpile by the WIRTGEN surface miner. In this way, the cutting process can be handled independently from loading the material on dumpers.

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WIRTGEN AMERICA, Inc. is a member of the WIRTGENGROUP, an internationally operating group of companies in the construction machinery sector incorporating the traditional product brands: WIRTGEN, VÖGELE, HAMM, KLEEMANN and BENNINGHOVEN. As technological leader, we can offer our customers mobile machine solutions for road construction and road rehabilitation, plants for mining and processing minerals or recycling material and for the production of asphalt. Our ratios: In 2017 the WIRTGEN GROUP generated consolidated sales of 3 billion euros. Presently the WIRTGEN GROUP employs 8,200 people.

WIRTGEN AMERICA, Inc. is a member of the WIRTGENGROUP, an internationally operating group of companies in the construction machinery sector incorporating the traditional product brands: WIRTGEN, VÖGELE, HAMM, KLEEMANN and BENNINGHOVEN. As technological leader, we can offer our customers mobile machine solutions for road construction and road rehabilitation, plants for mining and processing minerals or recycling material and for the production of asphalt. Our ratios: In 2017 the WIRTGEN GROUP generated consolidated sales of 3 billion euros. Presently the WIRTGEN GROUP employs 8,200 people.